World Watch articles from July 1999

World Watch archives from July 1999

Stop Subsidizing the Depletion of Ocean Fish.
July 1, 1999... Several forces are pushing the world's major fish stocks toward the brink of collapse - the relentless growth in demand for seafood, for example, and the fact that there arc just too many boats pursuing too few fish. But currently, the problem...

Notown.
July 1, 1999... The news from Littleton, Colorado this April, when two teenage boys rampaged through their high school with assault weapons, probably came as a much greater shock to Americans than, say, to Rwandans or Sudanese or Bosnians, or Turkish Kurds or...

Amazon hatchet job.
July 1, 1999... The Brazilian government is planning to effectively gut efforts to protect the Amazon, despite news that the world's largest and most quickly disappearing rainforest is being cleared twice as quickly as previously thought. In response to...

Earth's stocks down by one-third.
July 1, 1999... While economic assessments show a doubling of global wealth between 1970 and 1995, a new report estimates that in the same period, the Earth has lost one-third of its natural capital - as measured by the health of its forest, freshwater, and...

U.S. voters tell suburbia to slow down.
July 1, 1999... In November 1998, voters throughout the United States - the world leader in runaway suburban development - approved a variety of proposals to hold sprawl at bay. A Brookings Institution report identified 13 state and 226 local ballot...

WHY SHARE?
July 1, 1999... A strategy for living that cuts materials waste and pollution turns out to offer some important social benefits as well. In 1998, the Kellogg Company introduced a clever new product. "Breakfast Mates" brought together a single serving of...

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CROPS.
July 1, 1999... To its proponents, agricultural biotechnology is the way to reconcile ecological health with the food demand of the world's 6 billion people - and the billions yet to come. But it's hard to find that vision in the industry's first products. ...

UNNATURAL DISASTERS.
July 1, 1999... The severity of natural disasters set a new record in 1998, causing more than $92 billion in damages worldwide. Can we afford to write these disasters off as "acts of God," or is there a human culpability involved? In late October 1998,...

Nuclear Power Nears Its Peak.
July 1, 1999... As the new century approaches, energy planners around the world are discovering that the "energy source of the future" - nuclear power - is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Most countries have brought the construction of nuclear plants to...

On the Brink.
July 1, 1999... In the depths of the Amazon, nearly 1,600 kilometers up the Amazon River, sprawling squatter communities solidly encircle the largest city in the vast rainforest, Manaus. The boomtown of the Amazon's resource-fueled economy, which thrives on...